Okay, so all my previous vids have been made in Adobe Premiere. My computer (a crappy DELL laptop, 256MB RAM, 20GIG HDD) just could not tak it so i always borrwed a computer. I'm a graphic designer and illustrator so I thought a Mac would be a good investment. So I also got FCP.

My question is, what is the best way to export video for Cons and for internet enjoyment from this program. Please don't tell me I have to buy something else to do it T.T

With your sequence open, go File > Export > Using Quicktime Conversion. Select MPEG2 from the pulldown menu. Set the Aspect Ratio to the appropriate one for your footage. Go to the Quality tab. Select Two Pass VBR. Set the Target Bitrate and Max Bitrate as high as they will go. Set Motion Estimation tp Best. Save your file.

If you have the whole Final Cut Studio, you should also have a program called Compressor on your hard drive. If you don't, just use the instructions above. If you do, post a reply and I'll give you instructions for that.

Mac's work well for everything else I do. And that stuff earns me $$, pays the rent and stuff. AMV's do not. Not to mention I got it for only 150 bucks including all the extras (monitor, keyboard etc...got it off a friend of mine who only used it for FCS who then upgraded upgraded and needed a few bucks so she did me a favor) and it's almost quadruple everything I had in my crappy laptop. P:

Thanks for the advice Shazzy, I do indeed have Compressor ^^ So those notes would be great! ^^

::sigh:: I really love Premiere and since I already know how to do all this on there, it's makes me feel kinda dumb having to ask all of this and learn a new software. Even though it has a few little bugs in it I hate, I'm really diggin' FCS.

honestly - the graphic design community is biased as hell to macs.
i'm a graphic artist/illustrator too, and other than FCP, a pc can run every essential design program.
don't get me wrong - i like OSX. i spend around 8 hours a day on it. but it's not nearly as stable as most claim it to be over xp.

if XP had hot corners, i would never touch a mac again.

/rant off
/back on topic

i said what i did previously, because i assumed that you were using imovie. FCP is nice.

KioAtWork: I'm so bored. I don't have class again for another half hour.
Minion: masturbate into someones desk and giggle about it for the remaining 28 minutes

Honestly, I haven't found a great reason to use Compressor for MPEG2 exports. It's just more trouble than it's worth. But here you go:

With your sequence open, go to File > Export > Using Compressor. When Compressor opens there will be a Batch window open. Click the pop-up arrow, go to a "DVD Best Quality" option, and select "MPEG2". It doesn't really matter which "DVD Quality" menu we pick since we're going to customize it anyway.

Okay, there should be "1 entry" in the batch window now. Double-click it. A preview window and an inspector window will show up. Look at the Inspector window. Make sure everything matches your sequence (frame rate, apect ratio, etc.) in the Video Format tab. Go to the Quality tab, set it to Two pass VBR best and slide those quality sliders all the way up.

Go back to the batch window and to the same DVD Best Quality whatever. Select the AIFF option this time. This exports your audio.

Run the Compressor batch. When it's done, you'll have an AIFF audio file and a M2V video file. They should have the same first name (e.g. movie.m2v and movie.aiff). If they don't, rename them to have the same name yet different extensions. Open up MPEG Streamclip (if you don't have it, it's free) and load the M2V file. Go to File > Convert to MPEG with MP2 Audio. It will use your audio file provided it's in the same folder with the same first name. That's it.

As a sidenote, yes, Compressor provides you with a "muxed" MPEG2 option, which is what we're doing with MPEG Streamclip. Problem is, that gives you a MTS stream..which isn't what you want. Older versions of Compressor used to do normal muxed MPEG files...I dunno what they changed in the last few upgrades =\